Reviews

The Dream of the Marsh Wren by Pattiann Rogers

foggy_rosamund's review against another edition

3.0

Though I'm familiar with some of Rogers' work, this is the first of her books that I've read in full. This isn't a collection, but it does contain many of her poems: it is an extended essay, describing her writing life, and illustrated with her own poems, including some of her most famous. I have never read a book quite like this before: it's a good way to get an insight into Rogers' working process, and it also serves as an introduction to someone new to her work, because it collects many of her important poems. She is interested in science and the numinous and how these two things intersect: how science can inform us about gods, and how science can illuminate encounters with the divine. The central idea is that creativity is reciprocal, as she says, "creating the poem which simultaneously creates me which simultaneously creates the poem coming into being -- just as the marsh wren created by the marsh simultaneously creates and dreams the marsh of its creation and therefore creates itself."

This is a worthwhile book: I'm not always convinced by Rogers' philosophy, and some of her ideas about science and society lack nuance, but she's always interesting. Her poetry is more mixed: she mostly manages to avoid being too high-concept, but some of her poems are too theoretical to really stick in my mind. I also find her language and use of line breaks can be clumsy, which is unfortunate, because she can wield both these tools sublimely.